Behavior
Jumping spiders are generally diurnal, active hunters. Their well-developed internal hydraulic system extends their limbs by altering the pressure of body fluid (hemolymph) within them. This enables the spiders to jump without having large muscular legs like a grasshopper. Most jumping spiders can jump several times the length of their body. When a jumping spider is moving from place to place, and especially just before it jumps, it tethers a filament of silk (or dragline) to whatever it is standing on in order to protect themselves if their jump should fail. Should it fall for one reason or another, for example if the prey shakes it off, it climbs back up the silk tether. Some species, such as Portia will actually let themselves down to attack prey such as a web spider apparently secure in the middle of its web. Like many other spiders that leave a practically continuous silk trail, jumping spiders impregnate the silk line with pheromones that play a role in social and reproductive communication, and possibly in navigation.
Certain species of jumping spiders have been shown by experiment to be capable of learning, recognizing and remembering colors, and of adapting their hunting behavior accordingly.
Read more about this topic: Jumping Spider
Famous quotes containing the word behavior:
“The confusion of emotions with behavior causes no end of unnecessary trouble to both adults and children. Behavior can be commanded; emotions can’t. An adult can put controls on a child’s behavior—at least part of the time—but how do you put controls on what a child feels? An adult can impose controls on his own behavior—if he’s grown up—but how does he order what he feels?”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“To be told that our child’s behavior is “normal” offers little solace when our feelings are badly hurt, or when we worry that his actions are harmful at the moment or may be injurious to his future. It does not help me as a parent nor lessen my worries when my child drives carelessly, even dangerously, if I am told that this is “normal” behavior for children of his age. I’d much prefer him to deviate from the norm and be a cautious driver!”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“This whole business of Trade gives me to pause and think, as it constitutes false relations between men; inasmuch as I am prone to count myself relieved of any responsibility to behave well and nobly to that person who I pay with money, whereas if I had not that commodity, I should be put on my good behavior in all companies, and man would be a benefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate that he had a right to those aids and services which each asked of the other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)